The Eagle Has Landed---Along the Seward Highway

On Tuesday we drove south out of Anchorage, heading down the Seward Highway.  We will be back through Anchorage in a few weeks so I'm going to skip it for now and come back to it later when we get to spend a bit more time there.

The photo at the left shows what you come to just out of Anchorage.  The trailer ahead of us belongs to friends Jack and Gayle Stayton from New Mexico. We met them in Dawson and traversed the Top of the World Highway together.

 They had told us they were going to Portage, a place we hadn't heard about, so we decided to follow them. We hadn't gone too far when they pulled off the road and got out to look at a cliffside full of Dall Sheep.  I got out my new 750mm lens and took some photos of the white critters (see right). 

The view from the opposite side of the same roadside pullout looked pretty amazing too (below).  

The tide here is 33 feet from low to high.  What you see in the photo a left is half tide.  We had been warned not to try to walk out on the tidal flats because they are made up of silt and you will sink into muck so deep you can't get out. Then the tide comes in...
This would not be a very comfortable situation in which to find yourself.

We had lunch in a small town called Girdwood.  It has a reputation for being somewhat hippyish. And I found a t-shirt that said, "Girdwood: Elevation 2 feet.  We aren't as high as you might think."  Hmmm.

The town of Portage came up next, or would have if it hadn't sunk during the infamous 1964 earthquake.  Here we turned off towards Portage Glacier and beyond that, the town of Whittier. But stopped a mile or so down that road when Jack turned off onto a narrow track through the forest. We followed, hoping he knew where he was going.  Happily, he did.  We soon came to a clearing where we found an RV park with spaces we could back into on a beautiful stream.  This was the nicest setting we'd found on the whole trip.

 This RV park even had it's own small glacier coming down out of the mountain.









And a clear stream running behind our motorhome. The owner said it held Dolly Varden trout, but I didn't get a chance to find out.

We parked and set up, then drove a mile back to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, where they rescue injured or orphaned wild animals.  

They have elk, musk oxen (left), and various kinds of bears.  





The grizzly (below) seems to be patting his tummy after a big meal, but he hadn't been fed yet.

This Coastal Brown Bear (below right) was having a great time playing the water. You can see how some people begin to think these bears are cuddly and playful.  Humans get into trouble when they lose their fear of these wild and unpredictable creatures.

                                                       

The big fellow at the left is one of their many moose.







And we got to watch the black bears getting fed (below).  This is something you do very carefully.  Through a strong fence. 

This bald eagle in the photo below landed about 5 pm and sat on top of this very tall dead tree for an hour, despite valiant efforts by the seagulls to scare him off.  He is not a resident of the wildlife center, but he has figured out that the brown bears get fed at 6 pm. So he comes here to be in in position to steal chunks of meat which the keepers throw over the fence to the bears. He apparently doesn't own a watch, so he comes an hour early. He takes no chance of being late.



















On the way back to camp Jack and Gayle drove us down a mile or two to see the Portage Glacier (below).  It is amazing to see how blue the ice is.

Then we went back to camp and climbed up to our own mini-glacier.

That's Marsha above left, and Jack taking a photo of Gayle.

Then, for the first time on our whole trip, we got to barbecue and eat dinner outdoors.  The mosquitoes were fairly light at the campground.  We had a great meal.

Then, after dinner, we went down to a fire pit the camp owners have for their guests and made smoores or roasted marshmallows while sitting around a roaring fire.  You have to keep telling yourself that it is nighttime because, of course, it isn't.  When we went back to the motor home at midnight it was still full daylight.

The next day, Wednesday, we moved on towards Soldotna and the Kenai Peninsula.  In my next edition I'll tell you about my flight over a glacier in a Cessna floatplane today (Thursday).  Tomorrow we visit the town of Kenai, and on Saturday our friends and hosts here, Gary and Marlene Turner, have us set up for a drift boat fishing trip on the Upper Kenai.

So there is still a lot of Alaska left to tell you about.  Stay tuned!

John and Marsha

(All photos copyrighted 2013 by John B. Taylor)